TOW #16- IRB “What Do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?”

            Although the professions of being a schoolteacher and a Japanese Sumo Wrestler seem distant, they have one thing in common and it is the beauty of incentive, a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something. The author compares the possibility of promotion that provokes teachers to inflate their students’ scores to the ways that sumo wrestlers purposely lose matches due to bribery and black mail. Not only that, but the author also mentions how factors such as guilt and pride are weak motivators when compared to money and social incentives, which has power to influence anyone and anything. Through emphasizing causes and effects of events and appealing to logos, Levitt explores and emphasizes the effect of incentives on people’s choice of actions.

            Causes and effects often have the power to reveal consequences of a decision. By revealing that posting pictures of criminals of prostitution and shaming their reputation has decreased the amount of people soliciting prostitutes and mentioning the fact that money that is awarded to teachers with high overall class grades have increased teachers cheating for their students shows the scary results that are brought by social and money incentives. Not only that, but the author mentions how the effect of making three dollar fines for late- arriving parents in day cares is less than making three hundred dollar fee in terms of influencing parents and encouraging them to pick their children on time. Not only that, but the author incorporates the use of statistics to emphasize his point. With numbers that show the decrease in homicides and the logic of teachers changing the same consecutive answers that makes cheating easy and often times what catches them red handed, the author appeals to the readers logically and strongly makes his position.

            Through the author’s use of cause and effect and appeal to logos, I was very much convinced and was amused to see the author’s view and claim that asserts that schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have many things in common because whether in a classroom or a wrestling match, most people have incentive to cheat.